Submitting Your Manuscript

How to submit your manuscript explains how to enhance the value of your work, both in terms of its content and helping us to maximise the number of copies that can be sold.

By following the guidelines, you will:

* Minimise the delay from submission of manuscript to publication;

* Minimise the level of editorial changes made to your manuscript;

* Minimise the time you will spend checking or correcting proofs;

* Minimise the cost of production of your book.

* Maximise sales and dissemination of your work.

The production of each book requires the time and skill, arranged in advance, of an in-house editor and external proof reader, tabler, indexer, typesetter, designer, printer and binder. Hence it is very important that deadlines are adhered to. If you miss your place in the queue, delays in publication result.

Please submit your manuscript in its final form, ready to publish. In presenting a manuscript, there are a few simple style points we recommend to our authors. They help to ensure as smooth an editorial process as possible:

Do not use:

* tracked changes

* headers and footers

* underlining

* locked capital letters

* formatting commands

* multiple spaces (e.g. more than one space after a full stop) and multiple paragraph returns

* tabbing or indents.

Microsoft Word 97 (or a later edition) is our preferred word-processing package. Please let your editor know in advance if you intend to use a different package. Please submit your article either as an attachment by e-mail, (spread over several e-mails if large) or on disk?and keep a copy for yourself. There is a house style guide included for your reference and use in this document. Please supply the qualifications/ credentials you wish to appear beside your name, e.g. Mary Smith LL.M. Ph.D., Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Law, University of XYZ.

Footnotes

Footnotes should be used to cite references for cases, statutes, statutory instruments and so forth. Apart from that, they should be used to a minimal extent. If information in a note is vital to the main body of the text, it might be worth considering whether it should be incorporated into the text. Footnote indicators should be inserted in the text after all punctuation except colons, semi-colons and m-dashes. Please make sure you are using the correct function in Word (Insert>Footnote>Autonumber) as otherwise any subsequent additions or deletions might require a manual renumbering of all the footnotes. Footnotes should never include tabular material.

Graphic material

Please bear in mind that typesetting graphs creates extra work and expense during the editorial process. Before submitting the material, consider whether or not it is essential: could the information be expressed in the text instead? Also, bear in mind that graphic material will not be reproduced in colour. Where possible, tabular material, graphs or forms should be delivered electronically as a matter of course. Scans of hard copies can be made, but please note that success is highly dependent on the quality of the original. It is notoriously difficult to achieve a satisfactory result in this way. Graphs should be provided as a separate file in the program in which they were originally created, e.g. Excel. Do not use PowerPoint.

Headings

Headings and sub-headings enable readers to navigate their way around the text more readily. As a rough guide, each page of typeset text (c.850 words) should be broken up by at least one heading. Headings are typically in bold and sub-headings in italics; both are in sentence case rather than upper case or title case. Please ensure that the heading hierarchy you choose is clear and used consistently within the text. If you need to discuss options and possibilities, contact the house editor.

Checking proofs

You will have agreed a turn-around time for reviewing your book at proof stage when you signed your contract. If this is not the case, you should make sure such an agreement is reached as soon as you submit your manuscript. Please observe and work to this deadline to ensure that your book can be published on schedule and be available to its target market when necessary, e.g. production/editorial schedules for a student text must ensure that the book is published by the start of an academic year. In this instance, therefore, lengthy re-working of the book will not be possible in September. Please always ensure that your house editor is kept informed about any delays that you are currently experiencing, or are likely to experience.

Important note:

Broadly speaking, the proof stage is not an opportunity to add new material. It is mainly an opportunity to let the author see that no factual errors have been made during the process of editing, applying house style and typesetting.

Proofs

Generally you will receive a copyedited, house-styled and typeset version of your book. As well as applying house style, an editor will have corrected any errors of spelling, grammar or punctuation and sought to clarify any passages that do not read clearly. We appreciate that all writers have an individual style; but we will suggest changing wording, paragraph structure, etc. when we believe it would be of benefit. If you wish all changes made by the house editor to be tracked, please discuss this with him or her. Any substantive queries will also be made by your editor at this stage, either by marking them in the text or on a separate covering message.

Unless you have arranged otherwise, corrections should be marked clearly and legibly by hand on a printout of the book. (If changes made by the editor have been tracked, the function for highlighting changes in the printed document should be turned off before you print out the page and mark your corrections.) The pages should be returned by post or can usually be collected by courier. If it is necessary to introduce more than a few words of new material, please also e-mail the text so as to avoid mistakes being made when corrections are taken in.

House style

Certain conventions have been set so as to ensure consistency over time. Delivering material in house style saves a lot of time, so your efforts in this regard are much appreciated. Be aware that house style has recently been updated to streamline the way material is presented in print and online, so please read through the House Style Guide even if you have contributed to a Round Hall title in the past. Please note that house style should not be followed in quotations and extracts, where the original version will stand.